this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2024
219 points (90.1% liked)
Technology
59589 readers
2838 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Maybe i left out too much context.
Im not talking about the research itself, but about how it could be utilized.
Their idea (having small devices that can be powered by nothing but stray radiowaves) apparently works and is great by itself.
However its usefullness is limited if you cant somehow connect those devices with the rest of the world. Thats the issue im complaining about.
There are tons of small devices that don't have to be connected to be useful. Lots of personal items or small sensors.
Anything that can be powered by this research, can also be powered by a button sized battery for weeks if not not longer. I thinks its more intended for very off grid stuff but maybe im just too uncreative.
I just want it for my TV remote if the form factor is small enough
Good news, that was invented in 1956: https://www.theverge.com/23810061/zenith-space-command-remote-control-button-of-the-month
That's actually really neat!
Huh?
What are you asking for here? Some sort of worldwide free ISP?
There are already lots of concepts for low power wireless communication for example LoRaWAN The issue is not the ISP its the technology used to establish a connection between devices. We need hardware that can run with the low power requirements that come with this research.
That's not any sort of legal issue stopping you, that's physics. If you're trying to create say, some sort of mesh network, and the device is using all of the signal's power just to run itself, there's no power left to retransmit. You don't get something from nothing. We're talking microamps and smaller with these devices.
If you've ever used a crystal radio, you can get an idea for how weakly powered stuff like this is.
Edit: look up the channel "EEVBlog" on YouTube, dude has a dozen videos on various such devices and goes into the actual math and viability of each.